St Aubert's Skull
by Queen's Bishop
Summary: Paul LeMay completes his last mission and takes care of some unfinished business.


9

_No infringement on the rights of the owners of "Combat!" is intended. This story is for the enjoyment of "Combat!" fans only, not for any monetary profit by the author._

_Thanks to JML for proofreading and to Susan Rodriguez for beta reading._

**St. Aubert's Skull**

**by: Queen's Bishop**

**[ ] Indicates French is being spoken.**

_It had been a long and difficult week for Paul LeMay. Evelyn called Monday evening to let him know that the doctor said it was just a matter of time. It was a call he had been expecting ever since his last conversation with Nelson. At that time, once they finished talking, the Cajun had packed a suitcase. He had taken his neatly folded Class A uniform out of the cedar chest where it was stored and hung it up to air. Then he had polished his Sunday shoes until he could see his face reflected in them and finally, he had called the airlines for flight schedules. _

_This time, after speaking with Evelyn, he called and made a reservation for the first flight out of New Orleans Tuesday morning. When he served on the front lines during the war, Caje had never dwelled on the fact that the coming mission might be his last. But now, he realized this one was._

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_Evelyn was seated at Billy's bedside, but she rose and went to the Cajun when he first appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. They greeted each other warmly with the hugs and kisses that characterize a long friendship. The Nelson children, whom he had known since they were toddlers, also greeted their "Uncle Paul" affectionately, as did their spouses and the grandchildren. He was escorted to the bedside seat across from Evelyn. However, it wasn't until he clasped his comrade's hand and spoke to him that a blush of color returned to Billy's cheeks._

_As the two old soldiers talked and the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, the children and grandchildren thought "Poppy" had rallied from death's door and they began to wander from the room. Eventually only Evelyn and the Cajun remained. But, Paul had seen enough death in his life to know such was not the case. So, when at last Billy said he was tired and Evelyn asked Paul if he wanted to lie down and take a nap in the guest bedroom she had prepared for him, he declined. He remained at his friend's side, holding his hand and talking softly to him while Evelyn brushed the hair from his forehead and pressed a moist cloth to his lips. Billy smiled occasionally as he listened to the sound of the Cajun's voice and, sometime around sunset, he peacefully slipped away._

_Caje wanted his comrade to have a proper send-off, so he dressed carefully in his Class A uniform for the funeral. The trousers and jacket fit perfectly; he was still as lean as he had been when he was in his twenties. He stood at attention and saluted when the rifles fired, although his eyes were closed. The sound of the volleys and the smell of cordite seemed so fresh in his mind that he might have walked off the battlefield yesterday. Then, as the last notes of "_Taps" _drifted away, he gave Billy Nelson a final, well-deserved salute._

_That afternoon, he caught a flight back to New Orleans. Evelyn had wanted him to stay, at least overnight so he would be well-rested for the journey. But, Paul knew it was time to go. The children and grandchildren all lived close by and would take care of her. Still, he would call in a week or so just to check that all was well._

_It was on the flight home, as he was thinking about the last several days, that it suddenly came to him that he had some unfinished business. _

_Except when he talked to his squad mates, Caje had never been one to reminisce about the war. If a young person tried to engage him, his hearing would swiftly deteriorate. And, if a man of his own generation tried to strike up a conversation, he was always polite, but once they traded their branch of service, the conversation usually died out. After all, if the man hadn't come ashore on D-Day, there was nothing that could be said to make him understand what it had been like. And, if he had stormed Omaha Beach on that June morning in 1944, there was nothing more that needed to be said. _

_It wasn't that he was ashamed of his service, quite the contrary. He was proud of it and of the men he had fought with. It was just that the past was best left in the past, where painful memories didn't need to be explained to strangers who had no idea what they had endured. Billy Nelson had known what it was like. He had been able to talk to Billy. But now, Billy was gone. _

_So, the realization of the unfinished business surprised him. And that was why, after a fitful night of sleep, in the late afternoon of the next day, Paul LeMay opened the bottle of Jack Daniels® he had set on the table and poured a shot, then made it a double. He sat quietly, sipping his drink, looking out the window, and thinking…thinking back to another time, another place. After a while, he set the glass down and picked up the pen. But, even then he continued to stare out the window, and occasionally at the blank sheets of stationery lying in front of him, for a long time before at last he began to write._

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I am writing this so you will know that it really happened, that it is not some tale you might have heard and dismissed as a fabrication, a legend. Everything I write is true. It really happened. I know because, well, because I was involved.

Now days, people think it was easy. They say the landing on Omaha Beach on June 6th was difficult, but the rest was easy. They think we just marched through France and Belgium and into Germany. But, it wasn't easy. None of it was.

Those first weeks after the landing, we had such a small toehold in Normandy that we didn't know what was going to happen. Men and equipment were coming ashore, but we expected the Wehrmacht and their Panzers to roll over us at any moment. We awoke each morning, if we had slept at all, giving thanks that we had survived the night and fearing we would not survive the day.

The brass didn't want us to get bogged down in a repeat of the First World War trench warfare, so we were constantly being told to push forward and expand the small pocket we held. But, we were fighting in the hedgerows, never knowing who was on the other side or what was around the corner. It wasn't until the end of July that we finally broke out of the Cherbourg Peninsula.

We lost a lot of men on D-Day, killed or wounded. My best friend, Theo Dubois, was among those killed, not a hundred yards from where we came ashore. Within a few days, T/Sgt. Hanley got a field commission. He became a 2nd Lieutenant and led King Company's Second Platoon which was reassembled from what was left of some other units. I was still in First Squad with Sgt. Saunders, Pvt. Braddock, and Pfc. Watson, our medic. We called him Doc. That was all that was left of the squad after the landing.

But, some men who had come ashore in other units were added, Pfc. Littlejohn and Pvts. Kelly, Kirby and Nelson. We also got Cpl. Long. He was the BAR man and a friend of Saunders from when they fought together in North Africa. Then, Braddock became the company runner, and Cpl. Long, Pvt. Kelly, and Doc Watson were killed. Kirby became our BAR man and he did a good job. We got a new medic, and we called him Doc, too. But, after that, I stopped keeping track of who came and went. It was better not to think about it because, as a front line infantry unit, or as Lt. Hanley once told us, the point of the lance, we saw a lot of action and took more than our share of casualties.

I tell you this so you will know how it was and who we were on that day in late July 1944.

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_Paul stopped and read over what he had just written. He crossed out a word here and added one there. Then he put the pen down and wondered how he should tell the story. He closed his eyes and he could see it all so clearly. That day, like so many others, when the squad had been sent out on a reconnaissance patrol to probe for the enemy and, if need be, to fight over a few feet of French soil._

_He picked up the glass of whiskey, took a sip, and decided to first write how he became involved._

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One day, we were on a reconnaissance patrol and at first, all was quiet. We had made our way through one field of no-man's land, moving along all four of the hedgerows and were half-way down the second row in the second field when Sgt. Saunders suddenly raised his fist in the air and pointed to his right. We all dropped where we stood and crawled on our bellies to the wall of dirt. We hugged it like our lives depended on it, because they did. Above us was the tangle of trees, shrubs and prickly bushes, the hedge. I had good hearing back then, but I swear, sometimes that sergeant could hear a field mouse scurrying for cover.

We waited, each man holding his breath, as the seconds slowly ticked by. Then we all heard a few quiet words in German drift our way followed by the sound of the Krauts walking on the other side of the hedgerow. The sergeant looked at me. I held up all ten fingers to let him know that I thought there were more of them than us and he nodded in agreement. We waited until they had moved past us. Then he signaled us to creep down our side of hedgerow, back the way we had just come, as quietly as we could.

At the end of the field the Krauts would either turn left or right. If they went right, we would all breathe a sigh of relief, turn around and continue on our way. But, if they turned left, we would open fire as they came through the break in the hedge, trying to kill them before they killed us.

Sgt. Saunders moved off to his left, away from the wall of dirt, and he signaled us to spread out and keep down. There was no place to hide. Nothing had been planted in the field that spring, and the scrub grass that was growing was not yet tall enough to conceal our presence. We waited for the Germans to make their decision. They chose life.

For the rest of the patrol we continued to play cat and mouse as the sergeant crossed off that field and then another from his map until finally we completed our mission. We had located their forward outpost with its dug-in heavy machine gun. He marked its position and signaled us to head for home. We all knew that the next day the whole platoon would come back, hopefully with a Rhino (what we called a tank with big prongs attached to its front to clear a path through the hedgerows), and we would fight to try to dislodge the Krauts from that OP and push them back one field, two if we were lucky.

While we were on those reconnaissance patrols in the hedgerows, hardly a word was spoken. You never knew who was hidden from view and listening. So it was a surprise when we heard three men speaking in hushed but clear French voices on the other side of one that ran along a narrow lane.

Since I speak French, I was able to whisper right in the sergeant's ear a translation of what the men were discussing. They were headed in the same direction we were, toward the American lines. We walked parallel to them, separated by the hedgerow, because Sgt. Saunders thought they would give the alarm if they saw any Germans.

All the way home I listened to them talking about the relic. They were priests from Avranches, and they had left some relic behind when they fled. It had been hidden in the graveyard of their basilica, the Basilica of St. Gervais, four years earlier to keep it from falling into German hands.

That day they had fled, like many civilians, to avoid the upcoming battle for the city. But now, they were debating whether one of them should return and put the relic back in the church. They thought that without it inside to protect the Basilica, the church would be destroyed when the Americans and the Boche fought for Avranches.

I cannot explain it, but the more I listened, the more I felt compelled to help them. All that evening, I couldn't shake off the feeling. So, when it got dark, I slipped out of our bivouac area and went to the village where they had said they were headed. I found them and offered my assistance. I was thinking that when our squad entered Avranches, I would be able to return the relic to its rightful place.

But, the priests were afraid that the infantry wouldn't reach the city until after bombs had been dropped from airplanes, and tanks, both American and German, had crushed everything in their paths. That was when I learned that the relic wasn't a finger bone or a lock of hair, or even a splinter of wood from the True Cross which was, up to that moment, what I thought religious relics were. Instead, what they had hidden was the skull of St. Aubert. A skull!...complete with the hole where St. Michael the Archangel's finger had pierced it in the year 708.

I must admit, when I heard that, I sat back in my chair and just stared at them, because they were serious…serious about the Archangel putting a hole in St. Aubert's skull and serious about the skull protecting the Basilica.

We talked a while longer and I decided I would go into Avranches, retrieve the holy relic and the shrine, the reliquary that housed it, from the graveyard and put them back where they belonged. Why? I don't know. It was just something I had to do. Perhaps it was my small way of trying to preserve a little piece of the heritage of my ancestral country.

Fr. Louis Pulé gave me his identification papers, the ones he had been issued by the Germans. We looked vaguely alike so his physical description fit me. I picked up a jacket, shoes and a cap in the village before heading back to where the squad was bivouacked.

Sgt. Saunders awakened when I returned. Even though I could barely see him in the darkness, I could feel his icy stare upon me. He didn't accuse me of anything. He just stated that I had been gone a long time. I responded that something I had eaten hadn't agreed with me. But, I knew he didn't believe me so I stood there, not moving, not saying anything, with his eyes boring into me. Finally, I heard him roll over to go back to sleep.

I lay down but was awake for the rest of the night, thinking about what I had gotten myself into. The next morning, when nobody was looking, I stuffed the clothes into my knapsack.

Lt. Hanley led the platoon. There was no Rhino. It took us a long time to make our way around the hedgerow so we could attack from both flanks. When we were finally in position, we went up against that dug-in heavy machine gun.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I participated in the attack. I didn't desert my comrades before or in the middle of the battle. I waited until the lieutenant yelled, "FALL BACK! FALL BACK!" and all the members of the platoon who were able had safely retreated before I slipped away.

Traveling by myself, I made my way to the lane. I took off my field jacket and left it and my gear, including my dog tags, hidden at the edge of a field. Wearing the shoes, jacket and cap I had brought with me, I reached the outskirts of Avranches just before nightfall. From there, spotting the Basilica of St. Gervais was easy; the priests had told me it was the tallest structure in the city. When it was dark, I slipped into town and headed for the church.

I kept to the shadows, moving from one dark alleyway or doorway to another and I will admit, I was feeling confident, having made it that far without detection. But then, I turned a corner and stumbled right into a squad of Germans. They were just in the process of changing one of the guards so there wasn't the sound of their hob-nail boots marching down the cobblestoned street to alert me to their presence. They were led by a lieutenant. He spoke to me in passable French and I remember every word of our conversation.

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_Paul stopped writing for a moment and closed his eyes. Once again he was standing before the German officer. As his lips began to move, he opened his eyes and wrote: _

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[Your papers, Monsieur.]

I handed him Louis Pulé's identification papers.

He shone his flashlight on them and then on my face. [It is after curfew. What are you doing out on the street?]

[I was visiting a sick friend and lost track of the time.]

He looked at my papers again. [This says you are a priest. What kind of a sick friend were you visiting without wearing your cassock, Father?]

I chuckled and said, [There are many ways of giving comfort, my son.]

He continued to shine his flashlight on me. [Why are you wearing the trousers of an American soldier?]

I looked him straight in the eye. [I'm sure you can understand my position. It is quite difficult for me to acquire normal clothing without arousing suspicion. While doing a home visit out in the country, I came upon a dead soldier…Well, he didn't need the trousers any longer.]

This time, the lieutenant laughed. [You are quite a resourceful fellow.]

[One does what one has to in these difficult times.]

He laughed again. [Indeed! I like you, Louis Pulé…Fr. Louis.] Then the smile disappeared from his face. [But, if you are caught on the street after curfew again, I will shoot you myself. Have I made myself clear?]

[Lieutenant, if you find me out after curfew again, I deserve to be shot.]

Once again he laughed. [Then we understand each other. I will have two of my men escort you to your church to make sure you do not get side-tracked visiting another sick friend. Which one is it?]

[Thank you, that is most considerate of you. The Basilica of St. Gervais.]

He gave a few orders and I walked the rest of the way down the middle of the street, with one German soldier leading the way and the other walking behind me. When we arrived at the Basilica, they watched for several minutes as I crossed myself with the holy water, did my act of adoration before the altar and then sank to my knees in prayer. It was only then that I realized how badly my knees had been shaking.

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_Paul stopped writing. He laid the pen down and put his hands on his knees. 'How funny,' he thought. 'Even now, after all these years, just thinking about it still made them tremble.'_

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Once the Krauts left, I opened the main door just a crack and listened for another half hour. When I was satisfied that no-one was lurking in the darkness, I gently closed that door and made my way to the transcept door.

As the priests had told me, just outside was a shovel. By this time, the graveyard was completely covered by the shadow of the Basilica so it was pitch black. I moved quickly to the fourth gravestone of the third row and began digging behind the marker. It didn't take long to reach the reliquary. I pulled it out of the hole, removed the oilskin it had been wrapped in and stuffed that back into the cavity which I hastily refilled. After replacing the shovel, I went back inside the church.

Before I returned the shrine to its rightful place, I could not resist opening it and slipping my hand inside, wrapping it around St. Aubert's skull. When my finger rested on the hole where Michael the Archangel had touched him, I felt suddenly cold as a shiver run up and down my spine. I quickly withdrew my hand and completed my mission.

Once outside, I went to the wall surrounding the graveyard and hoisted myself over. This time, as I made my way through the darkened streets, I moved not with confidence but with the heightened sense of vigilance of a man who knows he cannot afford to make even the smallest mistake.

It was mid-morning before I made it back to where I had stashed my gear. I began working my way home, hedgerow by hedgerow. There seemed to be a lot of Germans on the move, and it was nightfall when I finally reached our lines.

That was when I learned that right after our ill-fated attempt to take out the Kraut outpost, the 361st Regiment had been pulled off the line and trucked to another forward position further east. We would not take part in the liberation of Avranches.

I managed to hitch a ride and catch up with King Company. When I reported in to Lt. Hanley, he seemed glad to see me. Sgt. Saunders was in the CP, but he didn't say anything. I learned that since the platoon's attempt to dislodge the Germans had been unsuccessful, they hadn't been able to search for me and I was listed as Missing in Action.

I told Lt. Hanley that after the fighting I had become disoriented and was unable to locate or immediately return to our lines. That seemed to satisfy him and that was what his official report said.

The lieutenant dismissed us, and I headed back to our billet with the sergeant. He still hadn't said anything to me. But, once we were out of earshot of the CP, he grabbed the lapels of my field jacket and slammed me hard against the side of a building.

"Don't you _ever_ do that again," he said through clenched teeth.

I tried to act innocent and said, "Do what, Sarge?"

"You getting disoriented is as likely as me sprouting wings an' flying. You took off to get that _relic_ thing from that church in Avranches. You know it, an' I know it, so _don't_ deny it."

I didn't say anything. We stood there, frozen.

Finally, he said, "Just don't ever do anything like that again. You got it!?"

I nodded. Sgt. Saunders let go of my lapels and never mentioned it again.

()()()()()()()()()()

_Paul again stopped writing and smiled as he leaned back in his chair. As terrible as the war had been, mixed in with the memories of all of the death, suffering and destruction, were the memories of the men he had served with. Men who had risked their lives on more than one occasion to save his, men he would have died for, men he would consider his comrades and friends to his dying day._

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The platoon did return to Avranches for R&R (rest and relaxation) a week or so after it had been liberated. Some parts of the city had been totally destroyed. Bombs had fallen in the neighborhood surrounding the church and there was plenty of damage where tanks from both sides had fired shells at buildings as they rumbled through the streets. But, the Basilica of St. Gervais was unscathed; not a single stone was out of place.

That was what happened. You can accept it as a miracle that the Basilica was saved because of the skull of St. Aubert or you can say it was a coincidence. You can dismiss what I have written as the ramblings of an old man, but I tell you, this is the truth even though there is no way to verify it.

The official record of the 361st Regiment will only show that I was Missing in Action for about a day and a half. You can't ask Lt. Hanley; we lost him in Germany in the final days of the war. And you can't ask Sgt. Saunders or anyone else from First Squad. As hard as it is for me to believe, it has been sixty-three years since we served together as young men. They are all gone now, may they rest in peace. I am the last one.

If you go to Avranches, you can see the Basilica of St. Gervais and the relic. But, if you ask what happened during the war, the current priests will say only that the skull was hidden. There is no record of where or by whom or when it was restored to the Basilica. Fr. Louis Pulé was killed in a traffic accident in 1956 and the two other priests died in the 1960's. I know because I returned to France in 1974 to speak with them.

Why am I still alive? I don't know. Maybe St. Michael or St. Aubert protected me so I could write it all down to document the miracle. If so, it is done and I am ready to join my comrades.

Paul LeMay

July 2007

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_The Cajun read over all he had written. He corrected a few spelling errors, but for the most part he was satisfied. He carefully folded the pages and put them in the envelope he had prepared. It was addressed to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican. _

'_Now there is no more unfinished business,' he thought. _

_Then, once more, Paul closed his eyes. He was tired; it had been a difficult week. And, with his last mission completed, he felt a sense of loneliness he had not known since that long ago June morning when Theo was killed._

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Author's notes:

There is a Basilica of St. Gervais in Avranches where the skull of St. Aubert, complete with the hole where St. Michael the Archangel is supposed to have touched him in 708, is kept.

The Allies didn't break out of the Cherbourg Peninsula until the conclusion of Operation Cobra on July 30, 1944 when Gen. Patton's 3rd Army captured Avranches. The Basilica of St. Gervais was not damaged during the battle.

The rest of the story is, of course, just a tale built around these two facts.


End file.
